


The Best Kind of Silence

by kleighanna



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-15
Updated: 2012-07-15
Packaged: 2017-11-10 00:37:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/460297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kleighanna/pseuds/kleighanna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She makes his world quiet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Best Kind of Silence

They float through space and time, somewhere in the middle of their timestreams. They're not racing towards an adventure, they're not running from their lives. He's lounging back on one of the console seats, watching River pilot the TARDIS, smooth as butter. His beautiful, clever, terribly flawed River Song.

The only woman in the entire universe who can make the whole world quiet.

It's a hammer dropping on his head, that realization. No one's ever been able to do that. No one in almost a millennium has ever come close. Except for River, the child of the TARDIS.

She glances over briefly, with a quirk of her mouth and he wonders if she can feel his eyes on her form. "Something wrong, sweetie?"

"No," he says, but when she turns back to him, he knows there was something in his voice. A few flicks of buttons and levers – he's always found it hot, how easily the TARDIS responds to her very capable hands – and comes to stand in front of him.

"You can't fool me, my love. " She swipes a thumb over his cheekbone. "Now what is it?"

She comes easily when he reaches for her waist, pulling her in. He leans his forehead against her stomach, feeling his whole body relax as her fingers thread through his hair.

"You make the world quiet."

Her fingers pause in their strokes. He barely resists the urge to nudge against her hand, to make her start again. "What?"

The Doctor looks up at her, at the breathlessness on her face. "The world. Well, the universe, really. Everything's so bumpy-wumpy, timer-wimey, spinning and spinning. And then there's you. And I see you, River, after it all, during it all, before it all, and every time, everything just-"

"Stops."

"Yes," he whispers. "It just stops."

Her fingers drift over his face now, across his eyebrows and down his nose. "Yes. Yes it does."

His long fingers stroke her waist, her ribs, her hips. Today, this touch isn't there to heat or arouse. It's a comfort for them both.

"All the time, racing round and around, and yet, here you are, here we are, and it's just quiet."

River presses a kiss to his forehead. "My mind never stops, you know. Twelve thousand consecutive life sentences gives you so much time to think, my love. Then I hear her, I hear you, and none of it matters anymore. All those swirling thoughts stop."

"Exactly," his hands press into her hips. "Exactly like that."

"Oh, my love."

"Yes."

It's all there, he knows, when he meets her eyes. Everything he feels for her, everything she does for him, and it's all echoed back in her own.

"Have I said it?" he asks, because he refuses to ruin this moment, this very perfect moment, by saying something, doing something, he's never done before. Not like this.

"Yes," she promises, cupping his cheeks, his face. "But say it again."

"I love you."

She leans down and presses her mouth to his, neither their first, nor their last.

But they make it good.


End file.
